Menino knows where true happiness resides

Joe FitzgeraldSaturday, December 01, 2012

Angela Menino has a lot of Dottie Morgan in her, which, if you ever met Dottie, you’ll understand is lofty praise.

Dottie, who married Walpole Joe, the former Red Sox skipper, in 1956, is a lady of grace, dignity and rock-solid common sense, which is why she was quietly seething as she stood at the rear of a 1991 press conference at Fenway Park, listening to club pooh-bahs explain they were firing her popular husband in order to bring Butch Hobson aboard.

“A penny for your thoughts,” an acquaintance whispered.

“I’ll tell you exactly what I told Joe when we walked in here,” she whispered back. “I said, ‘Look, we’ve got four great kids, beautiful grandkids, and all of our friends waiting for us when we get home. We don’t need the Red Sox to make us happy. We were happy before you got this job and that’s the way we’re going to stay.’

“He said, ‘Right.’ So just before he walked up there I told him, ‘Let’s get this over with and get back to Walpole.’â€‰”

Angela Menino would have understood that perfectly, especially two days ago as she sat mum in a room at Spaulding Rehab, watching her convalescing husband gamely assure assembled media that he’d soon be feeling chipper again, ready to swing back into action.

Her presence was a reminder he’s got more waiting for him at their modest home in Hyde Park than he’ll ever find at City Hall, and he’s smart enough to know it.

The guessing here has always been he relates to the public so well because he understands the things that matter most are not things, nor are they the addictive, superficial trappings of fame and fortune.

Take that from someone who’s met more than a few miserable, well-known millionaires.

Tom Menino is that odd duck who, closing in on 70, not only still loves his job, but is under no pressure whatsoever to step aside or throw in the towel.

In this most historically political town, this longest-serving mayor is virtually untouchable. Though he’s hardly glamorous and certainly not glib, no one ever had a firmer grip on the office: not Honey Fitz, nor the sainted James Michael Curley, nor the regal Kevin White.

Indeed, no Irishman or Brahmin ever came close to the longevity of Boston’s first Italian mayor, and perhaps that’s because Menino knows, as Dottie Morgan would put it, he doesn’t need the job to make him happy.

When you have a loving family and a storybook marriage, everything else is negotiable.